The “perfect” shuffle is a pervasive interconnect that is used throughout switching applications. Frequently, the “perfect” shuffle is used in high level descriptions of systems, whereas a different interconnect is used in implementations because of the difficulty of implementing a perfect shuffle well using electronics. While “perfect” shuffle devices are useful architecturally, they provide a space-variant interconnect pattern that is difficult to implement optically in an efficient, compact manner. Typical approaches for optically implementing perfect shuffles include splitting, magnifying, and interleaving the resultant images using interferometers or the use birefringent crystals. In a typical micro-optic approach, individual channels are reshuffled using holographic microlenses. A significant improvement to producing optical perfect shuffles was introduced in the image plane perfect shuffle of U.S. Pat. No. 5,892,620 entitled OPTICAL PERFECT SHUFFLE by the present inventor, which is incorporated herein by reference. This perfect shuffle provides a significantly more compact device than prior optical perfect shuffle devices. However, even this optical shuffle lacks the compactness and alignment tolerances needed with some of today's optical systems. For practical application of perfect shuffles, shuffle devices that are both compact and alignment tolerant are required. The compactness is required so that the devices can be located on circuit boards or inside modules. Similarly, tolerance of optical misalignments is needed because angular accuracies on the order of a degree and positional accuracies of the order of a millimeter are tolerable for components in computers or processors, but many existing shuffle or interconnect technologies require accuracies that are one to three orders of magnitude more stringent.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide an optical shuffle/interconnect system.
It is another object of this invention to provide an optical shuffle/interconnect system with compactness and performance improved through the use of gradient index rod lenses.
It is a further object of this invention to provide an optical shuffle/interconnect system in which the shuffle device is incorporated into an imaging system for greater compactness.
It is a still further object of this invention to provide an optical shuffle/Interconnect system in which alignment tolerances are greatly reduced.